Girlfriends Forever: 6 Stories of Unforgettable Friendships

Time with friends is like preventive care for your mental health. With a few more girls' nights, Thelma and Louise might have avoided the cliff altogether! This month, REDBOOK celebrates the healing power of friendship with a love letter from author Anne Lamott, real-life buddy confessions, and 1,000 girlfriend parties around the country. Cue "Wind Beneath My Wings"!

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"Friendship" is a mild word for such an extraordinary and holy connection, for what can be the most sustaining, life-giving, death-defying relationships some of us will ever experience. My closest friends are the reason for my deep faith in God, because through them I have discovered what superhuman intimacy and devotion are. I have been blessed by people whose unconditional love and brilliance and loyalty have almost single-handedly made it possible for me to survive.

I have always said that this experience called human life has not been a good match for me. A third of the time, it hurts you and yours too much. A third of the time, you feel so alien and clueless and inadequate that it might as well still be seventh grade. But that last third, where you get to talk to your friends, hang out and figure things out with them, commiserate, comfort and be comforted, gossip and laugh until you leak, is the realm where everything becomes worth it.

Our closest friendships are hallowed ground. When someone truly "gets" you, you're half the way home. There is no circumstance so miserable that your closest friends can't help you come through. If you have lost one of your best friends, then you have survived an unsurvivable loss. And it was almost certainly only your other closest, bosom-buddy friends who helped you do it, who sat in the dirt with you for as long as you needed, who brought you tea and never left, and who at some point helped pull you back up to your feet.

I shudder to admit this, but my best friend and business partner (always in that order) Stephen Finfer used to be my boyfriend. We lived together. It's difficult to imagine that he is someone I used to, well… ya know. But it's part of what makes our relationship invaluable: I know everything about him (from his obsession with making sure there's a twisty on every open cereal and cookie package, to his big heart), and he knew me before my days on American Idol and was there for the big moments, like when my grandmother died.

Still, we're nothing alike. I am a hotheaded Italian-Albanian who at times needs to be reminded to take a deep breath and think before I open my big mouth. And who's there to do it? Stephen.

He's not afraid to tell me the truth, no matter what. While most of the time I don't want to hear it, his words have a way of seeping in and changing my behavior. He was the brains behind the black bikini I wore on the American Idol finale in '09. Not the whole stunt, just the color: When I get super-nervous, I sometimes… well, pee a little — and he knew that a white bathing suit could be disastrous. (I'll never stop thanking him for that one.) The older I get, the more I realize that having a friend who levels with you is invaluable.

Stephen and I weren't destined to walk down the aisle. But to build an empire together? That part was absolutely meant to be.

"When you try to lose weight alone, other people sabotage you," says Sarah. "'Just have a cookie,' they say — their logic being, 'Sarah's big butt will make mine look smaller!'" So when a Weight Watchers series started at their office, the Los Angeles trio joined up and started a fitness blog together, where their funny posts help keep each other motivated. While dropping those stubborn pounds has been satisfying, the biggest payoff is their bond: "When Sarah told us she was pregnant, I knew we'd become more than just work friends, because I immediately started planning her shower!" says Lisa.

The plan was hatched at Dawn's wedding in 2008: These friends were all ready for kids (some of them for the second time around) and decided, heck, why don't we just "pull the goalie" together? Within a year, the entire Southern California group was pregnant, though Mandy needed a little help figuring it out: "During one girls' night, I told them I was bummed that the pregnancy test I'd taken was negative. There were two lines, but one was super-faded," she says. "Keri screamed, 'Mandy, you're pregnant!'" They effectively created the ideal playgroup, but have made a point not to let their friendship become all about the kids. "We try to schedule a girlfriends' weekend every three months. Our husbands do daddy day care while we're away, and all the babies are a mess and wearing mismatched clothes when we get back, but they have so much fun," says Amber.

A plain ol' book club wasn't working for these six Washington, DC–area smarties. "The characters we read about didn't quite speak to our own lives," says Yolanda. "So we decided to write our own!" She admits there were scheduling difficulties ("Trying to arrange meetings around six busy women's lives was like maneuvering a tractor-trailer on an obstacle course"), and it took them six years to finish. But it wasn't all grueling. "We rewarded ourselves for reaching writing milestones by taking trips. We've been to Madrid, the south of France, and South Africa," she says. And now for the payoff: Their book, Fourth Sunday, by B.W. Read (a.k.a. Because We Read), was published this spring. "When I heard that an editor at Simon & Schuster thought it was 'adorable,' I felt like, Wow! We've really done it!" says Chyla.

For the next 14 months, Nicole Griffiths's husband, Erik, a Navy reservist, will be serving overseas. So five of her girlfriends deployed themselves — to her house on Thursday nights, for everything from wine and conversation to unclogging her kitchen sink. The upstate New York friends don't just play, they also help Nicole care for her four kids and get guy-ish tasks done, like cleaning up after a pipe burst. "They shower me with love and support," says Nicole. "It's easy to lose who you are at the core when you wear so many hats — mother, wife, household taskmaster. But friend time helps you remember. Our Thursday nights are making the weeks fly by."

Hollywood screenwriters June Raphael and Casey Wilson fell in friend-love in a clown class in college (seriously). Now they collaborate on scripts for movies, like Bride Wars, and the sitcom Happy Endings (Casey also stars in it!). Their closeness helps them enormously… and slows them down unimaginably. Just follow this recent IM:

JUNE: 'K, We have to figure out why the character Molly decides — wait, did I tell you about the period tracker app???? Amazing.

CASEY: I told YOU about that app.

JUNE: Ooops, forgot! :) So, at this point in the script

CASEY: Wait, I forgot to tell you I made Evan another sexy video.

JUNE: BE CAREFUL!!!!!!!! THESE THINGS GET OUT!! Don't put your sweet family through this!!

CASEY: Sheesh, you act like I'm an idiot. I'll delete it!

JUNE: When?????????

CASEY: Soon!!!!!! I'm slammed!

JUNE: You're too busy to delete a video that could ruin you!! I'm coming over after we work to do it.

CASEY: Hahaha. Gotta pee.

JUNE: Me too.

(PAUSE)

JUNE: I'm back.

CASEY: I'm here. Sorry, got a snack.

JUNE: We have to start… I'm tired.

CASEY: I'm crashing.

JUNE: Should I bring over coffee so we can work at your house? A med iced blended sugar free vanilla, skim with two dashes of cinnamon, yes?